1.
Nuremberg trials
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The trials were held in the city of Nuremberg, Germany, and their decisions marked a turning point between classical international law and contemporary international law. Not included were Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler, and Joseph Goebbels, all of whom had committed suicide in the spring of 1945, reinhard Heydrich was not included, as he had been assassinated in 1942. The second set of trials of war criminals was conducted under Control Council Law No.10 at the U. S. Nuremberg Military Tribunals, which included the Doctors Trial. This article primarily deals with the IMT, see Subsequent Nuremberg Trials for details on the NMT, at the beginning of 1940, the Polish government-in-exile asked the British and French governments to condemn the German invasion of their country. The British initially declined to do so, however, in April 1940, three-and-a-half years later, the stated intention to punish the Germans was much more trenchant. In order that justice may be done and this intention by the Allies to dispense justice was reiterated at the Yalta Conference and at Berlin in 1945. British War Cabinet documents, released on 2 January 2006, showed that as early as December 1944 the Cabinet had discussed their policy for the punishment of the leading Nazis if captured. In late 1943, during the Tripartite Dinner Meeting at the Tehran Conference, US President Franklin D. Roosevelt joked that perhaps 49,000 would do. Churchill was vigorously opposed to executions for political purposes, US Secretary of the Treasury, suggested a plan for the total denazification of Germany, this was known as the Morgenthau Plan. The plan advocated the forced de-industrialisation of Germany and the execution of so-called arch-criminals. Roosevelt initially supported this plan, and managed to convince Churchill to support it in a less drastic form, later, details were leaked generating widespread condemnation by the nations newspapers. Roosevelt, aware of public disapproval, abandoned the plan. The demise of the Morgenthau Plan created the need for a method of dealing with the Nazi leadership. The plan for the Trial of European War Criminals was drafted by Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson, following Roosevelts death in April 1945, the new president, Harry S. Truman, gave strong approval for a judicial process. After a series of negotiations between Britain, the US, Soviet Union and France, details of the trial were worked out, the trials were to commence on 20 November 1945, in the Bavarian city of Nuremberg. On 20 April 1942, representatives from the nine countries occupied by Germany met in London to draft the Inter-Allied Resolution on German War Crimes, France was also awarded a place on the tribunal. The legal basis for the jurisdiction of the court was that defined by the Instrument of Surrender of Germany. Because the court was limited to violations of the laws of war, leipzig and Luxembourg were briefly considered as the location for the trial
2.
Institute of National Remembrance
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It was created by legislation enacted by the Parliament. The Institute specialises in the legal and historical examination of the 20th century history of Poland in particular, IPN investigates both Nazi and Communist crimes committed in Poland between 1939 and the Revolutions of 1989, documents its findings and disseminates the results of its investigations to the public. The Institute was established by the Polish Parliament on 18 December 1998 and it began its activities on 1 July 2000. According to a new law went into effect on 15 March 2007. However, key articles of law were judged unconstitutional by Polands constitutional court on 11 May 2007. The IPN is a member of the Platform of European Memory. IPN investigates crimes committed on Polish soil against Polish citizens as well as people of other citizenships wronged in the country and it is the IPN duty to prosecute crimes against peace and humanity, as much as war crimes. IPN collects, organises and archives all documents about the Polish communist security apparatus active from 22 July 1944 to 31 December 1989, IPN was created by special legislation on 18 December 1998. IPN is governed by the chairman and this chairman is chosen by a supermajority of the Polish Parliament with the approval of the Senate of Poland on a request by a Collegium of IPN. The chairman has a 5-year term of office, the first chairman of the IPN was Leon Kieres, elected by the Sejm for five years on 8 June 2000. The second chairman was Janusz Kurtyka, elected on 9 December 2005 with a term that started 29 December 2005 until his death in the Smolensk airplane crash on 10 April 2010. Franciszek Gryciuk was acting chairman from 2010 to 2011, when the current chairman, on 29 April 2010, acting president Bronislaw Komorowski signed into law a parliamentary act that reformed the Institute of National Remembrance. Among the most widely reported cases investigated by the IPN thus far is the Jedwabne Pogrom, a pogrom of Polish Jews committed directly by Poles, since December 2000 IPN has organized over 30 academic conferences,22 exhibitions in various museums and educational competitions involving thousands of students. IPN Bulletin is of an informative and popular-scientific character and contains articles pertaining to the history of Poland in the years 1939–1990 as well as describes the current IPN activities, Remembrance and Justice appears every half a year and is a scientific historical magazine. IPN also publishes books which are edited as collections of documents, reports and memories. The Public Education Office co-operates on a permanent basis with the Ministry of National Education and Sport, IPN gives opinions of curricula and textbooks on history that are used in Polish schools and is involved in teacher training activities. The IPN also co-organizes postgraduate diploma studies on history at the Jagiellonian University, on 18 December 2006 Polish law regulating IPN was changed and came into effect on 15 March 2007. This change gave IPN new lustration powers, the list gained much attention in Polish media and politics, and during that time IPN security procedures and handling of the matter came under criticism
3.
Poland
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Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe, situated between the Baltic Sea in the north and two mountain ranges in the south. Bordered by Germany to the west, the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south, Ukraine and Belarus to the east, the total area of Poland is 312,679 square kilometres, making it the 69th largest country in the world and the 9th largest in Europe. With a population of over 38.5 million people, Poland is the 34th most populous country in the world, the 8th most populous country in Europe, Poland is a unitary state divided into 16 administrative subdivisions, and its capital and largest city is Warsaw. Other metropolises include Kraków, Wrocław, Poznań, Gdańsk and Szczecin, the establishment of a Polish state can be traced back to 966, when Mieszko I, ruler of a territory roughly coextensive with that of present-day Poland, converted to Christianity. The Kingdom of Poland was founded in 1025, and in 1569 it cemented a political association with the Grand Duchy of Lithuania by signing the Union of Lublin. This union formed the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, one of the largest and most populous countries of 16th and 17th century Europe, Poland regained its independence in 1918 at the end of World War I, reconstituting much of its historical territory as the Second Polish Republic. In September 1939, World War II started with the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany, followed thereafter by invasion by the Soviet Union. More than six million Polish citizens died in the war, after the war, Polands borders were shifted westwards under the terms of the Potsdam Conference. With the backing of the Soviet Union, a communist puppet government was formed, and after a referendum in 1946. During the Revolutions of 1989 Polands Communist government was overthrown and Poland adopted a new constitution establishing itself as a democracy, informally called the Third Polish Republic. Since the early 1990s, when the transition to a primarily market-based economy began, Poland has achieved a high ranking on the Human Development Index. Poland is a country, which was categorised by the World Bank as having a high-income economy. Furthermore, it is visited by approximately 16 million tourists every year, Poland is the eighth largest economy in the European Union and was the 6th fastest growing economy on the continent between 2010 and 2015. According to the Global Peace Index for 2014, Poland is ranked 19th in the list of the safest countries in the world to live in. The origin of the name Poland derives from a West Slavic tribe of Polans that inhabited the Warta River basin of the historic Greater Poland region in the 8th century, the origin of the name Polanie itself derives from the western Slavic word pole. In some foreign languages such as Hungarian, Lithuanian, Persian and Turkish the exonym for Poland is Lechites, historians have postulated that throughout Late Antiquity, many distinct ethnic groups populated the regions of what is now Poland. The most famous archaeological find from the prehistory and protohistory of Poland is the Biskupin fortified settlement, dating from the Lusatian culture of the early Iron Age, the Slavic groups who would form Poland migrated to these areas in the second half of the 5th century AD. With the Baptism of Poland the Polish rulers accepted Christianity and the authority of the Roman Church
4.
SS
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The Schutzstaffel was a major paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist German Workers Party in Nazi Germany. It began with a guard unit known as the Saal-Schutz made up of NSDAP volunteers to provide security for party meetings in Munich. In 1925, Heinrich Himmler joined the unit, which had by then been reformed, under his direction, it grew from a small paramilitary formation to one of the most powerful organizations in Nazi Germany. From 1929 until the collapse in 1945, the SS was the foremost agency of security, surveillance. The two main constituent groups were the Allgemeine SS and Waffen-SS, the Allgemeine SS was responsible for enforcing the racial policy of Nazi Germany and general policing, whereas the Waffen-SS consisted of combat units of troops within Nazi Germanys military. A third component of the SS, the SS-Totenkopfverbände, ran the concentration camps, additional subdivisions of the SS included the Gestapo and the Sicherheitsdienst organizations. The SS was the organization most responsible for the killing of an estimated 5.5 to 6 million Jews. Members of all of its branches committed war crimes and crimes against humanity during World War II, the SS was also involved in commercial enterprises and exploited concentration camp inmates as slave labor. After Nazi Germanys defeat, the SS and the NSDAP were judged by the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg to be criminal organizations, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, the highest-ranking surviving SS officer at the time, was found guilty of crimes against humanity at the Nuremberg trials and hanged in 1946. By 1923, the Nazi Party led by Adolf Hitler had created a volunteer guard unit known as the Saal-Schutz to provide security at their meetings in Munich. The same year, Hitler ordered the formation of a bodyguard unit dedicated to his personal service. He wished it to be separate from the mass of the party, including the paramilitary Sturmabteilung. The new formation was designated the Stabswache, originally the unit was composed of eight men, commanded by Julius Schreck and Joseph Berchtold, and was modeled after the Erhardt Naval Brigade, a Freikorps of the time. The unit was renamed Stoßtrupp in May 1923, the Stoßtrupp was abolished after the failed 1923 Beer Hall Putsch, an attempt by the NSDAP to seize power in Munich. In 1925, Hitler ordered Schreck to organize a new bodyguard unit and it was tasked with providing personal protection for Hitler at NSDAP functions and events. That same year, the Schutzkommando was expanded to an organization and renamed successively the Sturmstaffel. Officially, the SS marked its foundation on 9 November 1925, the new SS was to provide protection for NSDAP leaders throughout Germany. Hitlers personal SS protection unit was enlarged to include combat units
5.
Heinrich Himmler
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Heinrich Luitpold Himmler was Reichsführer of the Schutzstaffel, and a leading member of the Nazi Party of Nazi Germany. Nazi leader Adolf Hitler briefly appointed him a commander and later Commander of the Replacement Army. Himmler was one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany, as a member of a reserve battalion during World War I, Himmler did not see active service. He studied agronomy in college, and joined the Nazi Party in 1923, in 1929, he was appointed Reichsführer-SS by Hitler. Over the next 16 years, he developed the SS from a mere 290-man battalion into a paramilitary group. He was known to have good skills and for selecting highly competent subordinates. From 1943 onwards, he was both Chief of German Police and Minister of the Interior, overseeing all internal and external police and security forces, on Hitlers behalf, Himmler formed the Einsatzgruppen and built extermination camps. Most of them were Polish and Soviet citizens, realising that the war was lost, he attempted to open peace talks with the western Allies without Hitlers knowledge shortly before the war ended. Hearing of this, Hitler dismissed him all his posts in April 1945. Himmler attempted to go into hiding, but was detained and then arrested by British forces once his identity became known, while in British custody, he committed suicide on 23 May 1945. Heinrich Luitpold Himmler was born in Munich on 7 October 1900 into a conservative middle-class Roman Catholic family and his father was Gebhard Himmler, a teacher, and his mother was Anna Maria Himmler, a devout Roman Catholic. Heinrich had two brothers, Gebhard Ludwig and Ernst Hermann, Himmlers first name, Heinrich, was that of his godfather, Prince Heinrich of Bavaria, a member of the royal family of Bavaria, who had been tutored by Gebhard Himmler. He attended a school in Landshut, where his father was deputy principal. While he did well in his schoolwork, he struggled in athletics and he had poor health, suffering from lifelong stomach complaints and other ailments. In his youth he trained daily with weights and exercised to become stronger, other boys at the school later remembered him as studious and awkward in social situations. Himmlers diary, which he kept intermittently from the age of ten, shows that he took a keen interest in current events, dueling, in 1915, he began training with the Landshut Cadet Corps. His father used his connections with the family to get Himmler accepted as an officer candidate. His brother, Gebhard, served on the front and saw combat, receiving the Iron Cross
6.
Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
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A total of 13,000 Jews died, about half of them burnt alive or suffocated. German casualties are not known, but were not more than 300 and it was the largest single revolt by Jews during World War II. In 1939, German occupational authorities began to concentrate Polands population of three million Jews into a number of extremely crowded ghettos located in large Polish cities. The largest of these, the Warsaw Ghetto, concentrated approximately 300, 000–400,000 people into a packed,3.3 km² central area of Warsaw. The SS conducted many of the deportations during the operation code-named Grossaktion Warschau, czerniaków committed suicide once he became aware of the true goal of the resettlement plan. Approximately 254, 000–300,000 Ghetto residents met their deaths at Treblinka during the two-month-long operation, the Grossaktion was directed by SS-Oberführer Ferdinand von Sammern-Frankenegg, the SS and police commander of the Warsaw area since 1941. He was relieved of duty by SS-und-Polizeiführer Jürgen Stroop, sent to Warsaw by Heinrich Himmler on 17 April 1943, Stroop took over from von Sammern-Frankenegg following the failure of the latter to pacify the Ghetto resistance. By the end of 1942, Ghetto inhabitants learned that the deportations were part of an extermination process, many of the remaining Jews decided to revolt. The first armed resistance in the ghetto occurred in January 1943, on 19 April 1943, Passover eve, the Germans entered the ghetto. The remaining Jews knew that the Germans would murder them and they decided to resist to the last, while the uprising was underway, the Bermuda Conference was held from 19–29 April 1943 to discuss the Jewish refugee problem. Discussions included the question of Jewish refugees who had been liberated by Allied forces, hanna Krall, who interviewed the only surviving uprising commander, Marek Edelman, stated that the ŻOB had 220 fighters and each was armed with a handgun, grenades, and Molotov cocktails. His organization had three rifles in each area, as well as two land mines and one gun in the whole Ghetto. The insurgents had little ammunition, more weapons were supplied throughout the uprising, some weapons were handmade by the resistance, sometimes such weapons worked, other times they jammed repeatedly. Shortly before the uprising, Polish-Jewish historian Emanuel Ringelblum visited a ŻZW armoury hidden in the basement at 7 Muranowska Street, in his notes, which form part of Oyneg Shabbos archives, he reported, They were armed with revolvers stuck in their belts. While I was there, a purchase of arms was made from a former Polish Army officer, amounting to a quarter of a million złoty, two machine guns were bought at 40,000 złoty each, and a large amount of hand grenades and bombs. Polish resistance provided the insurgents with a number of badly needed weapons and ammunitions from its meager stocks. Jewish right-wing resistance in the Jewish Military Union received large quantities of armament, including automatic weapons. AK disseminated information and appeals to help the Jews in the Ghetto, several ŻOB commanders and fighters later escaped through the sewers with assistance from the Poles and joined the Polish underground
7.
German Federal Archives
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The German Federal Archives or Bundesarchiv are the National Archives of Germany. They were established at the current location in Koblenz in 1952 and they are subordinated to the State Minister of Culture and the Media, and before 1998, to the Federal Ministry of the Interior. The institutions 2009 budget amounted to 54.6 million Euro, on December 6,2008 the Archives donated 100,000 photos to the public, by making them accessible via Wikimedia Commons. This national archive documented German government dating from the founding of the North German Confederation in 1867 and it also included material from the older German Confederation and the Imperial Chamber Court. The oldest documents in this collection dated back to the year 1411, photographs and film of a younger vintage were also contained in the original archive, much of which was contributed by non-governmental sources. Despite efforts to save the most valuable parts of the collection, in 1946, the German Central Archive was founded in Potsdam, then in the Soviet occupation zone and later in East Germany. This archive, renamed the Central State Archive in 1973, was viewed as the successor to the original archive, in part because it was located in the same city. By the end of the 1950s, records that had originally been seized by the government of the Soviet Union in the aftermath of World War II had been returned to the archive. In West Germany, the Cabinet of Germany decided to create a new Federal Archive in Koblenz in 1950, the United States and the United Kingdom, like the Soviet Union, also seized records from Germany following World War II in their respective zones of occupation. In 1955, a Military Archives Division was established as part of the Federal Archives as a place into which these records were returned, the reunification of Germany in 1990 also led to the unification of West Germanys Federal Archive with East Germanys Central State Archive. In the course of development, the formerly separate National Film Archive. With the unification of the two German archives in 1990, the traditions of the East Germany state authorities were absorbed into the Federal Archives, however, legal problems were encountered during this process in securing the archives and libraries of East Germanys political parties and mass organizations. Even though East Germanys political structure meant that these institutions had very close ties to the government, further problems arose as these records were separated from other East German documents, resulting in the Federal Archives presenting an incomplete picture of East Germanys history. In 1991, an initiative was implemented that placed the records in question into the possession of the Federal Archives. As a result of initiative, a bill amending the Federal Archives Act of 1988 that established the department foundation provided for the Federal Archives came into force on 13 March 1992. In addition to records, the Archives also contain material from political parties, associations. Besides the text documents, the Archives also keeps photographs, films, maps, posters, mommsen Hans Booms Friedrich Kahlenberg Hartmut Weber Michael Hollmann Media related to Bundesarchiv at Wikimedia Commons Federal Archives Website
8.
Koblenz
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Koblenz, also spelled Coblenz or Coblence, is a German city situated on both banks of the Rhine at its confluence with the Moselle, where the Deutsches Eck and its monument are situated. As Koblenz was one of the military posts established by Drusus about 8 BC, the name Koblenz originates from Latin confluentes, confluence or merging of rivers. Subsequently, it was Covelenz and Cobelenz, in the local dialect the name is Kowelenz. After Mainz and Ludwigshafen am Rhein, it is the third largest city in Rhineland-Palatinate, around 1000 BC, early fortifications were erected on the Festung Ehrenbreitstein hill on the opposite side of the Moselle. In 55 BC, Roman troops commanded by Julius Caesar reached the Rhine, about 9 BC, the Castellum apud Confluentes, was one of the military posts established by Drusus. Remains of a bridge built in 49 AD by the Romans are still visible. The Romans built two castles as protection for the bridge, one in 9 AD and another in the 2nd century, north of Koblenz was a temple of Mercury and Rosmerta, which remained in use up to the 5th century. With the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the city was conquered by the Franks, after the division of Charlemagnes empire, it was included in the lands of his son Louis the Pious. In 860 and 922, Koblenz was the scene of ecclesiastical synods, at the first synod, held in the Liebfrauenkirche, the reconciliation of Louis the German with his half-brother Charles the Bald took place. The city was sacked and destroyed by the Norsemen in 882, in 925, it became part of the eastern German Kingdom, later the Holy Roman Empire. In 1018, the city was given by the emperor Henry II to the archbishop-elector of Trier after receiving a charter and it remained in the possession of his successors until the end of the 18th century, having been their main residence since the 17th century. Emperor Conrad II was elected here in 1138, in 1198, the battle between Philip of Swabia and Otto IV took place nearby. In 1216, prince-bishop Theoderich von Wied donated part of the lands of the basilica and the hospital to the Teutonic Knights, the city was a member of the league of the Rhenish cities which rose in the 13th century. The Teutonic Knights founded the Bailiwick of Koblenz in or around 1231, Koblenz attained great prosperity and it continued to advance until the disaster of the Thirty Years War brought about a rapid decline. After Philip Christopher, elector of Trier, surrendered Ehrenbreitstein to the French, however, this force was soon expelled by the Swedes, who in their turn handed the city over again to the French. Imperial forces finally succeeded in retaking it by storm in 1636, the city was the residence of the archbishop-electors of Trier from 1690 to 1801. In 1786, the last archbishop-elector of Trier, Clemens Wenceslaus of Saxony, greatly assisted the extension and improvement of the city, the archbishop-elector approved of this because he was the uncle of the persecuted king of France, Louis XVI. Among the many royalist French refugees who flooded into the city were Louis XVIs two younger brothers, the Comte de Provence and the Comte dArtois
9.
Robert H. Jackson
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Robert Houghwout Jackson was an American attorney and judge who served as an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court. He had previously served as United States Solicitor General, and United States Attorney General, Jackson was also notable for his work as the chief United States prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials of Nazi war criminals following World War II. Jackson was admitted to the bar through a combination of reading law with an established attorney and he is the last justice without a law degree to be appointed to the Supreme Court. Jackson developed a reputation as one of the best writers on the Supreme Court, Jackson was born on a family farm in Spring Creek Township, Warren County, Pennsylvania on February 13,1892 and raised in Frewsburg, New York. His uncle soon introduced him to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who was serving as a member of the New York State Senate. Jackson attended Albany Law School from 1911 to 1912, Jackson chose the third option, he successfully completed the second year courses, and received his certificate in 1912. After completing the year at Albany Law School, Jackson returned to Jamestown to complete his studies and he passed the bar examination in 1913, and then joined a law practice in Jamestown. In 1916, he married Irene Alice Gerhardt in Albany, in 1917, Jackson was recruited to work for Penney, Killeen & Nye, a leading Buffalo firm, primarily defending the International Railway Company in trials and appeals. In late 1918, Jackson was recruited back to Jamestown to serve as the corporation counsel. In 1930, Jackson was elected to membership in the American Law Institute, in 1933, Jackson became active in politics as a Democrat, in 1916 he was head of Jamestowns local Wilson for President organization. In the years during and after World War I, he was a member of the New York State Democratic Committee, Jackson also turned down Roosevelts offer to appoint him to the New York Public Service Commission because he preferred to remain in private practice. In 1932, Jackson was active in Franklin Roosevelts presidential campaign as chairman of an organization called Democratic Lawyers for Roosevelt. In 1936, Jackson became Assistant Attorney General heading the Tax Division of the Department of Justice, Jackson was a supporter of the New Deal, litigating against corporations and utilities holding companies. In March 1938, Jackson became United States Solicitor General, serving until January 1940 as the chief advocate before the Supreme Court. During his time in this post, he argued 44 cases to the Supreme Court on behalf of the federal government and his record of accomplishment caused Justice Louis Brandeis to once remark that Jackson should be Solicitor General for life. Roosevelt regarded Jackson as a successor to the presidency in 1940. Their plan was to mention Jackson favorably in presidential remarks as often as possible, Roosevelt and his advisors next intended for Jackson to become the Democratic nominee for Governor of New York in 1938. They abandoned their effort to create a groundswell of support for Jackson gubernatorial candidacy when they ran into resistance from state Democratic Party leaders, in addition, Roosevelts decision to run for a third term in 1940 rendered moot the need to identify and promote a successor
10.
Katzmann Report
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The Katzmann Report is one of the most important testimonies relating to the Holocaust in Poland and the extermination of Polish Jews during World War II. It was used as evidence in Nuremberg Trials and numerous other proceedings against war criminals abroad and it describes part of the Operation Reinhard. The Report was published in German and illustrated with photographs of the systems of persecution, full not censored text of Katzman report was published in 2009. The 62-page book attempts to present the extermination of Jews as an orderly operation and it begins with the photo collection titled “The Solution of the Jewish Problem in East Galicia”, which is followed by the cost and benefit analysis. The report provides only a window into the scale of plunder, the totals are never rounded off. They are meant to lead the reader into believing in their authenticity, in the following months, his Jew hunts coupled with round ups for mass deportations to death camps produced a death toll of 143,000 people. Excerpt in English YadVashem. org Sara Neshamith, Galicia District JewishGen. org
11.
Polish United Workers' Party
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The Polish United Workers Party was the Communist party which governed the Polish Peoples Republic from 1948 to 1989. Ideologically it was based on the theories of Marxism-Leninism, until 1989, the PUWP held dictatorial powers, and controlled an unwieldy bureaucracy, the military, the secret police, and the economy. Its main goal was to create a Communist society and help to propagate Communism all over the world, on paper, the party was organised on the basis of democratic centralism, which assumed a democratic appointment of authorities, making decisions, and managing its activity. Yet in fact, the key roles were played by the Central Committee, its Politburo and Secretariat, between sessions, party conferences of the regional, county, district and work committees were taking place. The smallest organizational unit of the PUWP was the Fundamental Party Organization, in the crowning time of the PUWPs development it consisted of over 3.5 million members. It was called the system of the state and economy management. In certain areas of the economy, e. g. in agriculture, the system was controlled with an approval of the PUWP and by its allied parties, the United Peoples Party. After martial law began, the Patriotic Movement for National Rebirth was founded to organize these, the Polish United Workers Party was established at the unification congress of the Communist Polish Workers Party and Polish Socialist Party during meetings held from 15 to 21 December 1948. The unification was possible because the PPS activists who opposed unification had been forced out of the party, similarly, the members of the PPR who were accused of rightist – nationalistic deviation were expelled. Thus, for all intents and purposes, the PUWP was the PPR under a new name and it is believed that it was Joseph Stalin who put pressure on Bolesław Bierut and Jakub Berman to remove Gomułka and Spychalski as well as their followers from power in 1948. It is estimated that over 25% of socialists were removed from power or expelled from political life and he had served as President since 1944. After a new constitution abolished the presidency, Bierut took over as Prime Minister and he remained party leader until his death in 1956. Bierut oversaw the trials of many Polish wartime military leaders, such as General Stanisław Tatar, Bierut signed many of those death sentences. Bieruts death in Moscow in 1956 gave rise to speculation about poisoning or a suicide. In 1956, shortly after the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the most well known members included Franciszek Jóźwiak, Wiktor Kłosiewicz, Zenon Nowak, Aleksander Zawadzki, Władysław Dworakowski, Hilary Chełchowski. The Puławian faction - the name comes from the Puławska Street in Warsaw, after the events of Poznań June, they successfully backed the candidature of Władysław Gomułka for First Secretary of party, thus imposing a major setback upon Natolinians. Among the most prominent members were Roman Zambrowski and Leon Kasman, both factions disappeared towards the end of the 1950s. Initially very popular for his reforms and seeking a Polish way to socialism, in the 1960s he supported persecution of the Roman Catholic Church and intellectuals
12.
National Archives and Records Administration
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The NARA also transmits votes of the Electoral College to Congress. The chief administrator of NARA is the Archivist of the United States, the Archivist of the United States is the chief official overseeing the operation of the National Archives and Records Administration. The Archivist not only maintains the official documentation of the passage of amendments to the U. S, Constitution by state legislatures, but has the authority to declare when the constitutional threshold for passage has been reached, and therefore when an act has become an amendment. The Office of the Federal Register publishes the Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations and it also administers the Electoral College. Since 1964, the NHPRC has awarded some 4,500 grants, the Office of Government Information Services is a Freedom of Information Act resource for the public and the government. Congress has charged NARA with reviewing FOIA policies, procedures and compliance of Federal agencies, NARAs mission also includes resolving FOIA disputes between Federal agencies and requesters. Originally, each branch and agency of the U. S. government was responsible for maintaining its own documents, Congress established the National Archives Establishment in 1934 to centralize federal record keeping, with the Archivist of the United States as chief administrator. The National Archives was incorporated with GSA in 1949, in 1985 it became an independent agency as NARA, connor, began serving in 1934, when the National Archives was established by Congress. As a result of a first Hoover Commission recommendation, in 1949 the National Archives was placed within the newly formed General Services Administration. The Archivist served as an official to the GSA Administrator until the National Archives. An audit indicated that more than one third withdrawn since 1999 did not contain sensitive information, the program was originally scheduled to end in 2007. In 2011, a retired employee pleaded guilty to stealing original sound recordings from the archives, Archival Recovery Teams investigate the theft of records. NARAs holdings are classed into record groups reflecting the governmental department or agency from which they originated, Records include paper documents, microfilm, still pictures, motion pictures, and electronic media. Archival descriptions of the permanent holdings of the government in the custody of NARA are stored in the National Archives Catalog. The archival descriptions include information on traditional paper holdings, electronic records, as of December 2012, the catalog consisted of about 10 billion logical data records describing 527,000 artifacts and encompassing 81% of NARAs records. There are also 922,000 digital copies of already digitized materials, most records at NARA are in the public domain, as works of the federal government are excluded from copyright protection. However, records from other sources may still be protected by copyright or donor agreements and its Information Security Oversight Office monitors and sets policy for the U. S. governments security classification system. Many of NARAs most requested records are used for genealogy research
13.
Washington, D.C.
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Washington, D. C. formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, the District, or simply D. C. is the capital of the United States. The signing of the Residence Act on July 16,1790, Constitution provided for a federal district under the exclusive jurisdiction of the Congress and the District is therefore not a part of any state. The states of Maryland and Virginia each donated land to form the federal district, named in honor of President George Washington, the City of Washington was founded in 1791 to serve as the new national capital. In 1846, Congress returned the land ceded by Virginia, in 1871. Washington had an population of 681,170 as of July 2016. Commuters from the surrounding Maryland and Virginia suburbs raise the population to more than one million during the workweek. The Washington metropolitan area, of which the District is a part, has a population of over 6 million, the centers of all three branches of the federal government of the United States are in the District, including the Congress, President, and Supreme Court. Washington is home to national monuments and museums, which are primarily situated on or around the National Mall. The city hosts 176 foreign embassies as well as the headquarters of international organizations, trade unions, non-profit organizations, lobbying groups. A locally elected mayor and a 13‑member council have governed the District since 1973, However, the Congress maintains supreme authority over the city and may overturn local laws. D. C. residents elect a non-voting, at-large congressional delegate to the House of Representatives, the District receives three electoral votes in presidential elections as permitted by the Twenty-third Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratified in 1961. Various tribes of the Algonquian-speaking Piscataway people inhabited the lands around the Potomac River when Europeans first visited the area in the early 17th century, One group known as the Nacotchtank maintained settlements around the Anacostia River within the present-day District of Columbia. Conflicts with European colonists and neighboring tribes forced the relocation of the Piscataway people, some of whom established a new settlement in 1699 near Point of Rocks, Maryland. 43, published January 23,1788, James Madison argued that the new government would need authority over a national capital to provide for its own maintenance. Five years earlier, a band of unpaid soldiers besieged Congress while its members were meeting in Philadelphia, known as the Pennsylvania Mutiny of 1783, the event emphasized the need for the national government not to rely on any state for its own security. However, the Constitution does not specify a location for the capital, on July 9,1790, Congress passed the Residence Act, which approved the creation of a national capital on the Potomac River. The exact location was to be selected by President George Washington, formed from land donated by the states of Maryland and Virginia, the initial shape of the federal district was a square measuring 10 miles on each side, totaling 100 square miles. Two pre-existing settlements were included in the territory, the port of Georgetown, Maryland, founded in 1751, many of the stones are still standing
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Leather
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Leather is a durable and flexible material created by tanning animal rawhide and skin, often cattle hide. It can be produced at manufacturing scales ranging from cottage industry to heavy industry, people use leather to make various goods—including clothing, bookbinding, leather wallpaper, and as a furniture covering. It is produced in a variety of types and styles. Several tanning processes transform hides and skins into leather, Chrome-tanned leather, invented in 1858, is tanned using chromium sulfate and it is more supple and pliable than vegetable-tanned leather and does not discolor or lose shape as drastically in water as vegetable-tanned. It is also known as wet-blue for its color derived from the chromium, more exotic colors are possible when using chrome tanning. The chrome tanning method usually only takes a day to finish, and it is reported that chrome-tanned leather adds up to 80% of the global leather supply. Vegetable-tanned leather is tanned using tannins and other found in different vegetable matter, such as tree bark prepared in bark mills, wood, leaves, fruits. It is supple and brown in color, with the exact shade depending on the mix of chemicals and it is the only form of leather suitable for use in leather carving or stamping. Vegetable-tanned leather is not stable in water, it tends to discolor, so if left to soak and then dried it shrinks, in hot water, it shrinks drastically and partly congeals—becoming rigid, and eventually brittle. Boiled leather is an example of this, where the leather has been hardened by being immersed in hot water, historically, it was occasionally used as armour after hardening, and it has also been used for book binding. Aldehyde-tanned leather is tanned using glutaraldehyde or oxazolidine compounds and this is the leather that most tanners refer to as wet-white leather due to its pale cream or white color. It is the type of chrome-free leather, often seen in shoes for infants. Formaldehyde tanning is another aldehyde tanning method, brain-tanned leathers fall into this category, and are exceptionally water absorbent. Brain tanned leathers are made by a process that uses emulsified oils, often those of animal brains such as deer, cattle. They are known for their softness and washability. Chamois leather also falls into the category of aldehyde tanning, and like brain tanning, produces a porous, chamois leather is made using marine oils that oxidize easily to produce the aldehydes that tan the leather to color it. Rose-tanned leather is a variation of oil tanning and brain tanning. Rose-tanned leather tanned leaves a powerful rose fragrance even years from when it is manufactured and it has been called the most valuable leather on earth, but this is mostly due to the high cost of rose otto and its labor-intensive tanning process
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Polish resistance movement in World War II
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The Polish defence against the Nazi occupation was an important part of the European anti-fascist resistance movement. It was a part of the Polish Underground State, the largest of all Polish resistance organizations was the Armia Krajowa, loyal to the Polish government in exile in London. The AK was formed in 1942 from the Union for Armed Combat and it was the military arm of the Polish Underground State and loyal to the Polish government in Exile. Most of the other Polish underground armed organizations were created by a party or faction. Created by the leftist Peoples Party around 1940–1941, it would merge with AK around 1942–1943. The Gwardia Ludowa WRN of Polish Socialist Party The Konfederacja Narodu, created in 1940 by far-right Obóz Narodowo Radykalny-Falanga. It would partially merge with ZWZ around 1941 and finally join AK around fall 1943, the Narodowa Organizacja Wojskowa, established by the National Party in 1939, mostly integrated with AK around 1942. Narodowe Siły Zbrojne, created in 1943 from dissatisfied NOW units, the Obóz Polski Walczącej, established by the Obóz Zjednoczenia Narodowego around 1942, subordinated to AK. in 1943. The largest groups that refused to join the AK were the National Armed Forces, within the framework of the entire enemy intelligence operations directed against Germany, the intelligence service of the Polish resistance movement assumed major significance. Heinrich Himmler,31 December 1942 In February 1942, when AK was formed, in the beginning of 1943, it had reached a strength of about 200,000. In the summer of 1944 when Operation Tempest begun AK reached its highest membership numbers, the strength of the second largest resistance organization, Bataliony Chłopskie, can be estimated for summer 1944 at about 160,000 men. The third largest group include NSZ with approximately 70,000 men around 1943-1944, at its height in 1944, the communist Armia Ludowa, never merged with AK, numbered about 30,000 people. One estimate for the summer 1944 strength of AK and its allies, including NSZ, overall, the Polish resistance have often been described as the largest or one of the largest resistance organizations in World War II Europe. On 9 November 1939, two soldiers of the Polish army—Witold Pilecki and Major Jan Włodarkiewicz—founded the Secret Polish Army, one of the first underground organizations in Poland after defeat. Pilecki became its commander as TAP expanded to cover not only Warsaw but Siedlce, Radom, Lublin. By 1940, TAP had approximately 8,000 men, some 20 machine guns, later, the organization was incorporated into the Union for Armed Struggle, later renamed and better known as the Home Army. A few days later in an ambush near the village of Szałasy it inflicted heavy casualties upon another German unit, to counter this threat the German authorities formed a special 1,000 men strong anti-partisan unit of combined SS–Wehrmacht forces, including a Panzer group. Although the unit of Major Dobrzański never exceeded 300 men, the Germans fielded at least 8,000 men in the area to secure it, in the camp he organized the underground organization -Związek Organizacji Wojskowej - ZOW
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Yad Vashem
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Yad Vashem is Israels official memorial to the victims of the Holocaust. Established in 1953, Yad Vashem is on the slope of Mount Herzl on the Mount of Remembrance in Jerusalem,804 meters above sea level. Those recognized by Israel as Righteous Among the Nations are honored in a section of Yad Vashem known as the Garden of the Righteous Among the Nations, after the Western Wall, Yad Vashem is the second-most-visited Israeli tourist site. Its curators charge no fee for admission and welcome approximately one million visitors a year, naming the Holocaust memorial yad vashem conveys the idea of establishing a national depository for the names of Jewish victims who have no one to carry their name after death. The original verse referred to eunuchs who, although they could not have children, Yad Vashem was first proposed in September 1942, at a board meeting of the Jewish National Fund, by Mordecai Shenhavi, a member of Kibbutz Mishmar Haemek. In August 1945, the plan was discussed in detail at a Zionist meeting in London. A provisional board of Zionist leaders were established that included David Remez as chairman, Shlomo Zalman Shragai, Baruch Zuckerman, in February 1946, Yad Vashem opened an office in Jerusalem and a branch office in Tel Aviv and in June that year, convened its first plenary session. In July 1947, the First Conference on Holocaust Research was held at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, however, the outbreak in May 1948 of the War of Independence, brought operations to a standstill for two years. In 1953, the Knesset, Israels Parliament, unanimously passed the Yad Vashem Law, establishing the Martyrs, the new Yad Vashem museum was designed by Israeli-Canadian architect Moshe Safdie, replacing the previous 30-year-old exhibition. It is the culmination of a $100 million decade-long expansion project, in November 2008, Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau was appointed Chairman of Yad Vashems Council to replace Tommy Lapid. The Vice Chairmen of the Council are Yitzhak Arad and Moshe Kantor, elie Wiesel was vice chairman of the Council until his death on July 2,2016. The Chairman of the Directorate is Avner Shalev, who has replaced Yitzhak Arad, the Director General is Dorit Novak. The Head of the International Institute for Holocaust Research and Incumbent is John Najmann, the Chair for Holocaust Studies is Prof. Dan Michman. The Chief Historian is Prof. Dina Porat, the Academic Advisor is Prof. Yehuda Bauer. The Members of the Yad Vashem Directorate are Yossi Ahimeir, Daniel Atar, Michal Cohen, Matityahu Drobles, Abraham Duvdevani, Prof. Boleslaw Goldman, Vera H. Golovensky, Moshe Ha-Elion, Adv. Shlomit Kasirer, Yossi Katribas, Yehiel Leket, Baruch Shub, Dalit Stauber, Dr. Zehava Tanne, the aims of Yad Vashem are education, research and documentation and commemoration. Yad Vashem seeks to preserve the memory and names of the six million Jews murdered during the Holocaust, Yad Vashem also honors non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust. Yad Vashem trains 10,000 domestic and foreign teachers every year, the organization operates a web site in several languages, including German, Hebrew, Farsi and Arabic
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The Holocaust
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The Holocaust, also referred to as the Shoah, was a genocide in which some six million European Jews were killed by Adolf Hitlers Nazi Germany, and the World War II collaborators with the Nazis. The victims included 1.5 million children, and represented about two-thirds of the nine million Jews who had resided in Europe, killings took place throughout German-occupied Europe, as well as within Nazi Germany, and across all territories controlled by its allies. Other victims of Nazi crimes included ethnic Poles and other Slavs, Soviet citizens and Soviet POWs, communists, homosexuals, Freemasons, Jehovahs Witnesses, some 42,500 detention facilities were utilized in the concentration of victims for the purpose of gross violations of human rights. Over 200,000 people are estimated to have been Holocaust perpetrators, the persecution was carried out in stages, culminating in the policy of extermination of European Jews termed the Final Solution to the Jewish Question. Following Hitlers rise to power, the German government passed laws to exclude Jews from civil society, starting in 1933 the Nazis began to establish a network of concentration camps. After the outbreak of war in 1939 both German and foreign Jews were herded into wartime ghettos, in 1941, as Germany began to conquer new territory in the East, all anti-Jewish measures radicalized. Specialized paramilitary units called Einsatzgruppen murdered around two million Jews in mass shootings actions in less than a year, by mid-1942, victims were being regularly transported by freight trains to extermination camps where, if they survived the journey, most were systematically killed in gas chambers. This continued until the end of World War II in Europe in April–May 1945, the most notable exception was the Warsaw Ghetto uprising of 1943, when thousands of poorly-armed Jewish fighters held the Waffen-SS at bay for four weeks. An estimated 20, 000–30,000 Jewish partisans actively fought against the Nazis, French Jews took part in the French Resistance, which conducted a guerilla campaign against the Nazis and Vichy French authorities. Over a hundred armed Jewish uprisings took place, the term holocaust comes from the Greek adjective holókaustos, a variant of holókautos, referring to an animal sacrifice offered to a god in which the whole animal is completely burnt. Often used substantively in apposition with the noun thysia, the term appears in a fragment of pseudo-Callisthenes, writing in Latin, Jerome Latinized the Greek word as a neuter noun holocaustum, using it to translate references to the Jewish burnt offering in his translations of Exodus and Leviticus. In his Chronicon de rebus gestis Ricardi Primi, Richard of Devizes, the English poet John Milton had used the word to denote a conflagration in his 1671 poem Samson Agonistes and the word gradually developed to mean a massacre thereon. The term was used in the 1950s by historians as a translation of the Jewish word shoah to refer specifically to the Nazi genocide of Jews, the television mini-series Holocaust is credited with introducing the term into common parlance after 1978. The biblical word shoah, meaning calamity became the standard Hebrew term for the Holocaust as early as the 1940s, especially in Europe and Israel. Shoah is preferred by some Jews for several reasons including the offensive nature of the word holocaust which they take to refer to the Greek pagan custom. The Nazis used the phrase Final Solution to the Jewish Question, all branches of Germanys bureaucracy were engaged in the logistics that led to the genocides, turning the Third Reich into what one Holocaust scholar, Michael Berenbaum, has called a genocidal state. Every arm of the countrys sophisticated bureaucracy was involved in the killing process, as prisoners entered the death camps, they were made to surrender all personal property, which was catalogued and tagged before being sent to Germany to be reused or recycled. Berenbaum writes that the Final Solution of the Jewish question was in the eyes of the perpetrators, through a concealed account, the German National Bank helped launder valuables stolen from the victims
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Umschlagplatz
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A monument was erected in 1988 on Stawki Street, where the Umschlagplatz was located, to commemorate the deportation victims. For logistical reasons, the victims awaiting the arrival of Holocaust trains were kept at the Umschlagplatz overnight during Operation Reinhard. The same term in the German language is used commonly to denote a place where all goods for transport are handled. On some days as many as 10,000 Jews were deported, an estimated 300,000 Jews were taken to the Treblinka gas chambers, some sources describe it as the largest killing of a community in World War II. The mass deportation action ended on 21 September 1942, although trains to Treblinka continued to depart from 19 April 1943 until the end of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943. The Warsaw Umschlagplatz was created by fencing off a part of the Warszawa Gdańska freight train station that was adjacent to the ghetto. The area was surrounded by a fence, later replaced by a concrete wall. Railway buildings and installations on the site, as well as a homeless shelter. The rest of the station served its normal function for the rest of the city during the deportations. The railway leading to the square was constructed in 1876. Warehouses and other buildings were built between 1921 and 1935, after the German invasion of Poland in September 1939, and the occupation of the country, the square came under the administration of a dedicated German institution, the Transferstelle. Originally its purpose was to oversee the flow of goods between the newly established Warsaw Ghetto and the Aryan Side of Warsaw, at the time the ghettos inhabitants referred to the square as Umschlag. At the end of January 1942 the southern portion of the square was incorporated into the ghetto, starting in July 1942 the buildings located around the square began to be used by the Germans as places of selection. Jews were gathered and held there before deportation to the Treblinka death camp, the headquarters of the SS units responsible for the selections and deportations were located in the building of the old elementary school on Stawki Street. The Umschlagplatz was divided into two parts, the southern part, which was located within the walled ghetto, was the gathering point where those destined for transport awaited the arrival of the trains. The northern part included the rail and station where people were loaded onto the trains for Treblinka. Initially the roundups for the Umschlagplatz were supervised by the Jewish Ghetto Police, houses or entire blocks were cordoned off and then all the inhabitants were forced to gather in a controlled spot, such as a closed off street or a tenements courtyard. After a check of documents, the individuals were forced, under escort, emptied buildings were searched and those found hiding were either killed on the spot or joined with those proceeding to the square
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Maximilian von Herff
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Maximilian von Herff was a high-ranking commander in the SS of Nazi Germany during World War II. During World War II, Herff served with the Deutsches Afrika Korps in North Africa and he was promoted to Oberst and commanded Kampfgruppe von Herff. For his service in North Africa he was awarded the Knights Cross of the Iron Cross in June 1941, at the suggestion of Heinrich Himmler he transferred to the Waffen-SS. On 1 April 1942 Herff joined the Nazi Party and the SS, from 1 October 1942 to 8 May 1945, he was chief of the Persönlicher Stab Reichsführer-SS. He dealt with internal and financial SS matters, in his later diary entries, Herff would claim to have had knowledge of the Final Solution but not have played any role in administrative or actual involvement in exterminations or deportations. However, on 14–15 May 1943, Von Herff was in Warsaw during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and his adjutant, Karl Kaleske wrote of the deportations carried out following the uprising to Auschwitz concentration camp and other camps where special action was required. Jürgen Stroops report on the The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising contains a photograph of Herff, on 20 April 1944, Herff was promoted to SS-Obergruppenführer. He was captured by British forces in 1945, and held at Grizedale Hall POW camp and he suffered a stroke and died at nearby Conishead Priory Military Hospital. He was later reburied at Cannock Chase German war cemetery, Staffordshire, both were acquitted of any war crimes and along with Maximilian von Herff claim they were only involved in the Nazi Party base and Waffen-SS not the extermination of the Jews. The couple would return to live in England in the 1960s. Knights Cross of the Iron Cross on 13 June 1941 as Oberst and as commander of Kampfgruppe von Herff
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Majdanek concentration camp
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Therefore, Majdanek became the first concentration camp discovered by Allied forces. Also known to the SS as Konzentrationslager Lublin, Majdanek remains the best preserved Nazi concentration camp of the Holocaust, unlike other similar camps in Nazi-occupied Poland, Majdanek was not located in a remote rural location away from population centres, but within the boundaries of a major city. This proximity led the camp to be named Majdanek by local people in 1941 because it was adjacent to the suburb of Majdan Tatarski in Lublin. The Nazi documents initially called the site a Prisoner of War Camp of the Waffen-SS in Lublin because of the way it was operated and funded. It was renamed by RSHA in Berlin as Konzentrationslager Lublin on April 9,1943, however, the original plan drafted by Himmler was for the camp to hold at least 25,000 POWs. In early November, the plans were extended to allow for 125,000 inmates and it was further increased in March 1942 to allow for 250,000 Soviet prisoners of war. Construction began with 150 Jewish forced laborers from one of Globocniks Lublin camps, later the workforce included 2,000 Red Army POWs, who had to survive extreme conditions, including sleeping out in the open. By mid-November only 500 of them were alive, of which at least 30% were incapable of further labor. In mid-December, barracks for 20,000 were ready when an epidemic broke out. All work ceased until March 1942, when new prisoners arrived, although the camp did eventually have the capacity to hold approximately 50,000 prisoners, it did not grow significantly beyond that size. Those camps had begun operations in March, May and July respectively of that year, subsequently, Himmler issued an order that the deportation of Jews to the camps be completed by the end of 1942. The gassing was performed in plain view of other inmates, without as much as a fence around the buildings, another popular killing method was execution by the squads of Trawnikis. According to the Majdanek museum, the gas chambers began operation in September 1942, there are two identical buildings at Majdanek, where Zyklon-B was used. Executions were carried out in barrack 41 with the use of hydrogen cyanide released by the Zyklon B. The same poison gas pellets were used to disinfect prisoner clothing in barrack 42, by mid-October 1942 the camp held 9,519 registered prisoners, of which 7,468 were Jews, and another 1,884 were non-Jewish Poles. By August 1943, there were 16,206 prisoners in the main camp, minority contingents included Belarusians, Ukrainians, Russians, Germans, Austrians, Slovenes, Italians, and French and Dutch nationals. According to the data from the official Majdanek State Museum,300,000 persons were inmates of the camp at one time or another, the prisoner population at any given time was much lower. From October 1942 onwards, Majdanek also had female overseers, Majdanek did not initially have subcamps
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Auschwitz concentration camp
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Auschwitz concentration camp was a network of German Nazi concentration camps and extermination camps built and operated by the Third Reich in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany during World War II. It consisted of Auschwitz I, Auschwitz II–Birkenau, Auschwitz III–Monowitz, Auschwitz I was first constructed to hold Polish political prisoners, who began to arrive in May 1940. The first extermination of prisoners took place in September 1941, from early 1942 until late 1944, transport trains delivered Jews to the camps gas chambers from all over German-occupied Europe, where they were killed with the pesticide Zyklon B. An estimated 1.3 million people were sent to the camp, around 90 percent of those killed were Jewish, approximately 1 in 6 Jews killed in the Holocaust died at the camp. Many of those not killed in the gas chambers died of starvation, forced labor, infectious diseases, individual executions, and medical experiments. In the course of the war, the camp was staffed by 7,000 members of the German Schutzstaffel, some, including camp commandant Rudolf Höss, were executed. The Allied Powers refused to believe reports of the atrocities at the camp. As Soviet troops approached Auschwitz in January 1945, most of its population was sent west on a death march, the prisoners remaining at the camp were liberated on 27 January 1945, a day now commemorated as International Holocaust Remembrance Day. In the following decades, survivors, such as Primo Levi, Viktor Frankl, and Elie Wiesel, wrote memoirs of their experiences in Auschwitz, and the camp became a dominant symbol of the Holocaust. In 1947, Poland founded the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum on the site of Auschwitz I and II, immediately after the Nazi seizure of power in Germany, acts of violence perpetrated against Jews became ubiquitous. The Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service, passed on 7 April 1933 excluded most Jews from the legal profession, similar legislation soon deprived Jewish members of other professions of the right to practise. Harassment and economic pressure were used by the regime to encourage Jews to leave the country voluntarily and their businesses were denied access to markets, forbidden to advertise in newspapers, and deprived of government contracts. German Jews were subjected to violent attacks and boycotts, in September 1935 the Nuremberg Laws were enacted. The Reich Citizenship Law stated that only those of Germanic or related blood were defined as citizens, thus Jews and other minority groups were stripped of their German citizenship. The laws were expanded on 26 November 1935 to include Romani people and this supplementary decree defined Gypsies as enemies of the race-based state, the same category as Jews. By the start of World War II in 1939, around 250,000 of Germanys 437,000 Jews had emigrated to the United States, Palestine, the United Kingdom, Nazi Germany invaded Poland in September 1939. German dictator Adolf Hitler ordered that the Polish leadership and intelligentsia be destroyed, approximately 65,000 civilians, who were viewed as being inferior to the Aryan master race, were killed by the end of 1939. In addition to leaders of Polish society, the Nazis killed Jews, prostitutes, Romani, sS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich, then head of the Gestapo, ordered on 21 September that Polish Jews should be rounded up and concentrated into cities with good rail links
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